UPDATE: Check out the five best application launchers for the results of this Hive Five. There was a time in the not-so-distant past that launching a new application was a tedious, unpleasant task. Luckily, thanks to a handful of fast and powerful application launchers, our days of digging through the Windows Start menu or hunting for a needle among an enormous haystack of applications are over. If you aren't already using an application launcher to speed up your daily computing, it's about time you start. If you are dedicated to your app launcher, then we want to know about it. For this week's Hive Five, we're tackling the ever-popular and divisive topic of application launchers. Hit the jump for more details and to cast a vote for your favorite application launcher.

Your Start menu and Applications folder are growing larger and harder to navigate every day, but…
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The first round of the Hive Five voting takes place in the comments, where you nominate your favorite tool for the job. We get hundreds of comments, so to make your nomination clear, please include it at the top of your comment like so: VOTE: Application Launcher Goes Here. If you don't follow this format, your vote may not be counted. After you've made your nomination, let us know what makes it stand out from the competition.

About the Hive Five: Our new feature series, the Hive Five, asks readers to answer the most frequently asked question we get—"Which tool is the best?" Once a week we'll put out a call for contenders looking for the best solution to a certain problem, then YOU tell us your favorite tools to get the job done. Every Thursday, we'll report back with the top five recommendations and give you a chance to vote on which is best. For an example, check out last week's Best RSS Newsreaders Hive Five.